Chapter 35
35
ZAC
As soon as he got to the room, Zac stripped off and went into the shower. It was one of those huge ones, with sandstone tiling and jets that came out of both the ceiling and the walls. Right now, he needed all of them and he wanted them to hit his body hard enough to distract him from everything that had happened today, both good and bad. The sadness of saying goodbye to Audrey and the reminders that brought of losing his mum. The confusion of the things he’d found among his mum’s mementoes. The kindness of Alice and Val. The devastating suspicion that Larry could be his father, and the utter horror of meeting him. And then the biggest joy of all – learning that his father was the person he’d always believed him to be.
He’d thought nothing else could add to the emotional tornado that had spun right through the last twenty-four hours, but then there she was at the airport.
But she wasn’t alone.
Hands against the wall, he raised his head to let the jets hit his face, then lifted the shampoo and ran it through his hair, barely aware of what he was doing, his actions on autopilot because his mind was elsewhere.
Kara. And Ollie Chiles. The first time they’d met, she’d mentioned her friend, the struggling actor. By the second time, he was a big name. But at that point she’d told Zac that she was engaged to someone else. Tonight, it was absolutely obvious that Ollie and Kara were a couple – the way they were holding hands, the way Ollie looked at her and the way he spoke about them looking forward to their trip to Hawaii. She must have split up with her fiancé and then got together with Ollie.
He didn’t understand the timeline of any of this. All he did understand was that if there had been a gap between Kara’s relationships, then he’d missed an opportunity to be something more than the guy she’d bumped into a couple of times at an airport.
He’d been so determined to be respectful, not to encroach on her life or her relationship by calling her or keeping in touch, that he’d let a chance to make it into something more slip through his fingers. What. An. Idiot.
Now she would never know that every single year, apart from this year, because he’d been delayed by the funeral, he’d flown in and out of Glasgow on the same date, at the same time, in the hope that he’d find her. Or that he searched every crowd in the hope that he’d see her there. He’d been ecstatic when he’d spotted her tonight, and then… crash. Burn. Over. Idiot.
He rinsed the shampoo off his hair, then switched off the jets, before grabbing a towel from the rack and drying himself off. He wrapped it around his waist and went out into the bedroom, deciding he deserved a beer from the minibar. Even that reminded him of her. He’d just closed it when there was a bang at the door. Probably his dad, up to say goodnight.
He checked in the spyhole and…
Not his dad.
The woman who’d been holding her boyfriend’s hand only an hour or so ago.
What kind of fresh, fricking torture was this?
He opened the door, expecting some kind of exchange, but no, she marched straight in, not even looking in his direction until she was past him, turned back and then took in the sight in front of her.
‘Aw bollocks, you’re killing me,’ she groaned.
‘Sorry. I’ll go put something on,’ he offered, suddenly aware that he was half-naked.
‘No,’ she said, with finality. ‘I’ll learn to cope. I might just not look at you while I’m speaking. Right, here goes. I need to ask you a couple of things and I need you to be 100 per cent honest, because I just risked my life to be here. If you knew my sister, you’d understand.’
Still keeping her eyes averted, she was now making a beeline for the minibar.
‘Okay, so I want to ask you if there’s a world, any world at all, where you would think of me as more than just a woman you occasionally bump into at airports?’ Question asked, she delved into the small fridge.
He had no idea what was going on right now but he was going with it, mostly because it was impossible to stop the grin that had crossed his face just because she was here.
‘Do you want me to go into depth about it or is this a yes or no situation?’
Standing up, eyes now on him, she broke a square off a bar of Dairy Milk and popped it in her mouth. ‘Yes or no.’
‘Yes.’
Now she was the one who was grinning. ‘Really?’
‘Still yes or no?’ he checked.
‘Yes.’
‘Then definitely yes.’
‘Okay, before I get carried away, I need to provide more information. Would it change your answer if I told you that I only broke off my engagement three days ago?’
So he must have got the wrong idea about Ollie earlier. Huge relief. ‘No.’
‘Or that I lost my job on the same day?’
‘No.’
‘Currently without a fixed address?’
‘No.’
‘Have to leave tomorrow morning on the 6a.m. flight to London to join my family on the connecting flight to Hawaii or my sister will murder me in cold blood?’
‘No.’
‘And if I stayed here tonight… would I need to go book a connecting room?’
‘No.’ That one was the easiest answer of them all.
‘Zac, is this crazy? I swear I’m normally pretty sane and rational but this… You know I look for you everywhere. I’ve come to this airport every year, just because I hoped I’d see you and I was over the moon when I found you last year. And that’s so wrong because I was engaged, and yet…’ She stopped, running out of words, so he took over.
‘I’m normally pretty sane and rational,’ he copied her words, incredulous that they’d both been searching for each other all these years. ‘But I look for you everywhere too. Every time I come through this airport, I go to every bar, every lounge, every coffee shop, hoping I’ll see you too. When I found you last year, it felt like my heart stopped. Tonight, it felt like it finally started again. And I’m not a mushy guy who usually says stuff like that.’
‘I’m not a mushy woman who usually likes it,’ was her perfect reply.
‘So Ollie and you?’
‘My best friend.’
‘And me?’
She stepped forward, raised her face to his, then kissed him. ‘Let’s start with being the guy I meet in airport hotels and see where we are by morning.’